As members of the Council of State Bioscience Associations (CSBA), we write to urge you to maintain the Orphan Drug Tax Credit (ODTC), which supports research into these devastating conditions, in the reformed tax code.

The CSBA is made up of state-based biotech organizations representing many of the companies developing treatments for a wide variety of rare diseases, ranging from rare pediatric cancers to deadly genetic disorders.

We support your efforts to reform America’s corporate tax code to make the U.S. competitive on the global stage, including your drive to lower the corporate tax rate. However, paying for rate reduction by eliminating the ODTC would severely hamper our ability to bring life-saving treatments for rare and devastating diseases to patients. Thus, we strongly support preserving the ODTC in any tax reform legislation.